An Amorous Route: Love and Laughter Along Germany’s Romantic Road

By Scott Donald

The number one job of the tourist is to entertain the locals... at least it is according to Scott Donald's light hearted account of love and laughter along Germany's Romantische Straße, or Romantic Road. With his wife in tow, he takes you on a winding winter journey full of gingerbread houses, seductive walled cities and castles with more than a little personality. His playful yet fascinating insights into the cuisine, culture and history of Franconia and Bavaria, interspersed with tales of his hilariously unfortunate interactions along the way, make this an inspiring read that's guaranteed to have you snorting with laughter.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scott Donald
• Release date: Jan 21, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458035189

Scott Donald

Scott Donald, spends his free time attempting to write a travel blog about his favourite town in Japan, Numazu, Shizuoka. He claims that this is because he is trying to help foreigners discover more about Numazu, but it might also be an excuse to go to a good restaurant. He also makes very wobbly travel videos. You can find out more about his blog at numazu.wordpress.com . As an obscure aside he has also written a number of band bios. He is currently working on his next travel book based on his up and coming adventure in Vietnam.

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An Amorous Route: Love and Laughter Along Germany’s Romantic Road

By Scott Donald

ISBN: 978-1-4580-3518-9

Published by Hungry Feet Media at Smashwords

Edited by Mike Kanert (www.thekanert.com)

Copyright 2010 Scott Donald

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Acknowledgements

A special thanks to my wife for letting me put her in these pages. I hope the love shows. To Mike Kanert for his painstaking efforts in editing my book. Lisa Wilson for her encouraging comments. Of course, for mum and dad for their unconditional support.

For Milla

Chapter 1: The beginnings: Of Igor’s, purpose and tastes

Castles, castles, castles. My wife’s penchant for castles and, no doubt, the associated ideas of princess-hood had finally led us to a trip to Europe. Ever since we met, I always knew that my wife wanted to be a princess. Not everyone noticed it but I picked up the little nuances like bossing people around (by people I mean me) or being surprised that the house was not cleaned in her absence. I, on the other hand, seemed to have little aspirations\ beyond being the humble peasant perpetually in the service of his queen. Okay, I paint a slightly exaggerated picture, but it will be worth it when my wife reads this and subsequently chases me around the house as I burst out with fits of laughter and hopefully lead us to the bedroom for a cuddle. Fine, maybe my aspirations are higher; buffoonish court jester might fit the bill.

My princess’ penchant for castles came a little later. When my wife, Lauren, was studying visual arts in university she developed a passion, leaning towards obsession, for castles and all the stories that surrounded them. Her medium was printmaking and she commenced her flirtation by painstakingly etching out copper plates that ultimately became prints of castles.

Just listening to my wife explain the process of printmaking is enough for me to slam my head on the desk after my chin slips off my palm as sleep all-to quickly overcomes me. But just etching castles into bits of metal was not enough for her. She then began the tedious task of etching out old English calligraphy onto these plates. If this was not difficult enough for me to grasp she had to etch the calligraphy in backward so that when it came to print the words would be around the right way.

All this effort culminated in her final year exhibition where she produced a collection of prints themed on castles that intermingled fantasy and nonfiction with stories that tempted you to imagine a life within their stone walls.

Just as no true mad scientist is without their Igor, my wife, the artist, entrusted me to carry out the more menial tasks involved in the preparation for her ‘Castle Stories’ exhibition. I lumbered about finding material, making frames, gluing my fingers to bits of wood and generally carrying heavy things, all the while making a special note to slobber out Yes master at any convenient time.

It was probably this involvement in my wife’s castle exhibit that engendered my affection for castles and the idea of Europe. I, too, was getting carried along on her journey through the fanciful world of castles. Of course the reality of the functional daily life - or struggle if you will - of those who occupy castles was far from our minds. It was the romance of the castle that so stirred our sense of adventure not how some poor sod had to lug the fly-bath of a lavatory bucket down from the tower every day.

The first castle she fell in love with was the famous Neuschwanstein Castle: that grand castle that rests at the feet of the Allgäu Alps along Germany’s southern border. It stands so boldly and unashamedly as a representation of what all castles should aspire to be when they grow up. Today, the castle is probably most famous for the inspiration it gave Walt Disney when he created the fairy tale castles for his theme parks. However, a far more intriguing story emerges when you look into the castles history. This story involves Neuschwanstein’s creator, a mad king hell-bent on designing a castle reinvigorated with all the romantic bits of the castles of yore. Neuschwanstein was to be the castle of castles no matter the cost. However, the cost ended up being the king’s life.

I wanted to find out more about this king and his castle but I could not justify an expensive air ticket from our home in Japan to Germany for a couple of days at a castle, although my wife certainly could. I had to think of a good number of other excuses for my wife and I to go to Germany, and I don’t think that I could persuade my wife that meeting buxom milkmaids would be a particularly winning incentive.

I spent hours searching the internet, reading comments from travelers and sifting through the rubbish of tourism websites. I was getting particularly frustrated by the tripe from tourism websites. Most of these sites just seemed to be an endless display of marketing rip-offs which led to über tourist traps, long queues and empty pockets.

Finally I came across an excuse that justified our flight to Germany. I had stumbled across a tourist route that ran from Würzburg on the river Main and meandered its way south through medieval towns and rolling country meadows until finally reaching the town of Füssen. Lying at the base of the Allgäu Alps, Fussen is the home of Neuschwanstein Castle.

The name of the route was the Romantische Strasse or Romantic Road. From what I could tell, the Romantic Road was a term created by travel agents in the 1950’s to describe a 350-kilometer route traversing through cities, towns and hamlets that have an un-spoilt architectural quality that could be described as ‘distinctly German’. The German part of my heritage is rolling its eyes at the cliché but the rest of me is quite content with the whole gingerbread-house stereotype.

However, the most important piece of information that led me and my wife to decide on this trip was that the route took us past dozens of castles and palaces. It would be like a gradual crescendo to the ultimate climax, Neuschwanstein.

I was also excited about the food and drink that we would be experiencing along the way. Germany doesn’t have much of a reputation as a culinary hub. My first thought of Germany’s gastronomic culture conjured up images of tubes of salt, fat and curry powder that could roughly be described as sausage; sauerkraut (what I believed to be basically rotting cabbage); and enormous jugs…of beer. The lattermost I was quite happy about. But the more I researched, the more I was pleased to find that Western Germany, within which our Romantic Road traveled, was a bastion of culinary delicacies. Perhaps it was neighboring France’s influence, but this area has a history of producing fine breads, cheeses, untainted by pasteurization, and exceptional processed meats.

The more I looked into it, the more I realized that the food was going to be as exciting a part of the trip as the castles would be. Before researching for this trip I didn’t realize that Germany boasted over 1000 different types of world-renowned sausage and hundreds of different breads. The breads were going to be of particular interest to me because I had just begun to make my own sourdough breads and I wanted to know how my breads compared to the real deal.

Western Germany also boasts loads of cultural treats distinctly unique to the Bavarian and Franconia regions. My taste buds were piqued when I learned of the likes of Späetzle, a type of pasta, or sweets like Schneeballen, a biscuity ball powdered with sugar cinnamon or dipped in chocolate. I had also read of the different ways they prepared game for the dinner plate and was looking forward to a taste of rabbit, suckling wild boar and goose.

Sobriety promised to be a problem too. Our guide books had assured us of at least one brewery in every town we visited. Up until recently, the Germans made their beer based on a strict law called the Reinheitsgebot, or the German Purity Law, which restricted the manufacture of beer to three core ingredients, water, barley and hops (the function of yeast had not been discovered at this time). Nevertheless the variety of beers that these German brewers manufactured was staggering. While the Purity Law is no longer in place today many breweries still follow its strict tenet. From my experience of living near a microbrewery I knew that the best beers always came from these smaller operators and I was looking forward to imbibing their offerings.

Wine, in the Franconia and Bavarian regions we would travel along, was also something we were looking forward to. Probably the most famous of Franconia wines is the Riesling. Their Riesling is somewhat sweeter than their French counterparts. Traditionally, this was because their grapes were left to hang on the vine a little longer before picking which created a wine called a Spätlese and if the grapes were left until the first frosts then a very fresh sweet wine was formed, called Eiswein. This suited my wife’s sweet tooth and preference for white wine.

We planned to travel during our next set of holidays over the Christmas break. We had had our first all-too-brief white Christmas in Japan the previous year, and we were excited about the prospect of having a real European Christmas. Though I was a little hazy on the facts of what a real Europe would look like, I did imagine it to be snowy, with a real Christmas tree of Silver Fir, spiced wine and tummy-warming food. My wife also assured me that it should also include plenty of wood-carved Christmas ornaments and blown-glass baubles. This of course would also mean that a European Christmas also comprised of an extra suitcase to carry back said trinkets.

Because we were living in Japan, our journey would begin with a flight from Tokyo’s Narita Airport, a transfer via Paris and then to the home of the Euro, Frankfurt. We would pick up a car in a town near Frankfurt called Aschaffenburg and then drive to Würzburg for their famous Christmas markets. Next, we will travel onwards to Bad Mergentheim where we had arranged accommodation for Christmas. Then we would be off to the most famous of Germany’s walled towns, Rothenberg ob de Tauber. From here, we would keep our itinerary flexible for the next few days and find a place to stay in any town that struck our fancy, or would have us for that matter. We would then head down to Füssen for New Years and, of course, see my wife’s dream castle before negotiating the autobahn back to Frankfurt via a stopover in Munich.

We were going to be eating, seeing and living the Romantic Road until our tongues swelled to black, our eyes burst asunder and our livers could serve as a fine substitute for foie gras. As the time dragged ever slower toward our big adventure we imagined enjoying every minute of it.

Chapter 2: Tokyo to Paris and the art of yoga, a fumbling passport and then to Frankfurt

After an exhausting twelve-and-a-half-hour journey from Tokyo, we arrived in Paris’ Charles De Gaulle Airport. I unfolded my 192 centimeter lankiness from my seat after having performed several yogic feats of contortion during the flight.

I swear economy-class seating was never designed for tall people. If I sat normally, my knees would touch the chair in front, and if the person in front wanted to recline their chair then they would be surprised to find my knees uncomfortably placed in their kidneys. I could try and stretch my legs out under the chair in front but I would almost have to dislocate my hips to perform the feat, and then suffer bruised shins from the back of the seat in front. If I had a window seat I could kind of sneak my legs up along the side of the fuselage, or if I had an aisle seat I could stretch my feet out along the aisle and trip over flight hostesses and half-asleep passengers as they made their way by. But hey, it’s only 16 hours of my life right?

We grabbed our cabin luggage and queued up with the other impatient passengers while our plane taxied into our allotted terminal. As the plane's passenger door opened we exhaustedly stumbled out into the rabbit warren of passageways of Charles De Gaulle. Our zombie-like procession somehow lurched its way to immigration and customs, perhaps drawn by the scent of fresh bodies.

As we went through customs in Paris on the way to our connecting flight to, Frankfurt we were greeted by